When a refugee in Wales was denied free travel that he was entitled to under a new government scheme, it was brushed aside as an administrative error. But what does the incident say about the pernicious effects of UK border policy and the ideology it is designed to create? Tirth Trivedi spoke to the man at the sharp end of state racism.
Words and images by Tirth Trivedi
When I meet Raman, he is dressed in a tidy three-piece suit sitting in a neat office, his smart demeanour masking a journey of immense struggle.
After several years of trying to find his identity as he escaped from his homeland, travelling across western Asia and Europe on foot, he survived horrible conditions in multiple refugee hostels and camps in the United Kingdom. But now Raman finds himself at a juncture where the fact of escaping persecution is no longer enough for him to be treated as a legitimate refugee.
Because for Raman, the border doesn’t end at the point where states meet, it follows him everywhere he goes.
After persevering through brutal conditions in the infamous Penally asylum camp for six months, Raman moved to Swansea, and eventually received refugee status, following which he was employed at a law firm at their offices in Barry.
The only way for him to reach his workplace was by using the free transport scheme for refugees that the Welsh Government provided. But despite being eligible to use the scheme, Raman was repeatedly refused, at times on ethnic grounds. He was, in effect, met with a national border at a Welsh train station.
Raman escaped his homeland of Kurdish Iran to escape ethnic and political persecution from the Iranian government, but that fear of racial discrimination has followed him to Wales.
“Being from the Kurdish ethnic minority and also participating in some political activity… its basically all about ethnic and racial subordination and it could cost you your life, the same thing we are facing here right now,” says Raman.
Raman escaped his hometown in Iran back in 2019, leaving behind his job at a bank, his then 3-year-old daughter and the rest of his family along with his property in a matter of 30 minutes. Crossing the entirety of Europe on foot, he crossed the English Channel from France and was taken to a refugee hostel in London in 2020.
After a couple of months in this hostel, with a meagre 12-hour notice, Raman was asked to pack up and enter a coach with about thirty other asylum seekers, with an unknown destination.
“None of us knew where we were going. We even asked the drivers, they said they don’t know. Of course, they knew, but they were afraid the people would harm them,” says Raman.
After a few hours of driving on motorways, the asylum seekers in the coach reached the Penally camp at around 4 A.M., still with no clue about where they had arrived. “It’s the first time in my life I thought it could rain horizontally, towards your face; it was very windy that night. We were moved into some huts or barracks. It was unimaginable.”
“I basically describe it as a prison, it was a punishment for me. For someone like me who has been in trouble fighting for freedom to be kept in a place with barbed wires, security gates and guards everywhere… it’s an ex-military base for people to be prepared for the harshest conditions, I was sent there, for what reason?” says Raman.
Raman was released from the Penally camp after six months, but his living conditions after the move to Swansea were not much better.
“In this period, you are only free on bail. It means you have got no rights. You’re basically just out there and not behind bars, living on less than 40 pounds a week. For me, it has been 37 pounds for these two years,” says Raman.
Eventually, however, Raman got into contact with Hillary Brown, a human rights lawyer from Barry known for her work with refugees and victims of racist discrimination, and started working for her as an admin assistant at her law firm, Virgo Consultancy.
But now that Raman could finally look ahead to a bright future, the persecution of an ever shifting border only hampered his ambition of finally living a decent life in Wales.
In May 2022, the Welsh Government announced a travel scheme for refugees, through which individuals could avail of free bus and train travel as long as either their origin, destination or both were in Wales.
However, different outlets and manuals of this scheme had different wordings, causing apparent confusion about who was eligible for free travel and who was not.
Since the scheme was declared in support of the refugees escaping Ukraine, some appear to have thought the scheme was only for Ukrainian refugees, even though it made no mention of such particulars.
Raman’s only way of making it to his office in Barry was through this scheme, since he was still surviving on £36 a week. With an off-peak day return journey between the two stations costing more than £16, Raman would have starved to just reach his workplace for two days a week.
“In some places it said it’s only for Ukrainians, in some places it didn’t. Some places said its only for buses, and in some it said it’s for both buses and trains. I contacted Transport for Wales and they said that it is valid for all refugees until September,” says Raman.
Refugees were also unsure about what documents they should be carrying. “For Ukrainians a passport is enough,” adds Raman. “For others some places say a BRP (Biometric Residence Permit) is enough, some places say you also need a letter from the home office that says you have been granted the refugee status. Nobody seems to have a clue.”
Another confusion seems to be about the status difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker. While Raman has lived in the UK as an asylum seeker for more than two years now, he was only granted refugee status about three months ago.
One of the officials at Swansea railway station denied entry on the bogus grounds that Raman had stayed in the country for more than six months.
“Nowhere is it mentioned that you should be in this country for less than six months. Nowhere… it is all very open to interpretation what the scheme is.”
This gap of interpretation has caused discriminatory issues when it comes to eligibility, says Raman.
“There are some racist ones [guards]] . They say, ‘Its meant to be for Ukrainians. Not for everyone to come and use the system.’ This is what happened to me. At the time I felt very discriminated against and humiliated.”
He continues as we talk through what happened:
“I thought to myself, and I told her (the Transport for Wales official), ‘I am really sorry I wasn’t born with blue eyes and blonde hair,’… I felt broken down.”
Raman himself had escaped from a lifetime of war, and he sympathizes with the situation in Ukraine. “She said that these are Ukrainians that are fleeing from war. Nobody could understand the Ukrainians as I do because it’s been a few months since there has been a war in Ukraine but wars in my country and the neighbouring countries have been going on for over a hundred years… you have no idea what I have left behind and what I have been through, you could not walk for a second in my shoes,” says Raman.
Raman has become used to this sort of treatment, but he has reached his limit. “What is the point of this discrimination? I have been fighting against this kind of discrimination, something that could cost me my life, and I ended up here; somewhere that is meant to be a sanctuary for refugees, I won’t tolerate this here. By no means.”
As Raman continues to live in Wales, he says that most people he has interacted with are friendly, including the railway officials. But according to him, it is the responsibility of the government and Transport for Wales to make sure the rules are clear and understood by their staff: “The people who are dealing with the employees are not educated about this scheme at all… they listen to you and understand but they need to be educated.”
But how was it that a train station worker in Wales became, in effect, a border guard, and can it be put down to individual error or lack of clarity in a policy?
Hillary Brown, the CEO of Virgo Consultancy Services and Raman’s employer, has worked on several cases dealing with institutional racism, such as the crimes committed against Siyanda Mngaza, Mouayed Bashir, Mohamud Hassan and others. Hillary is a vocal critic of institutional racism in the Welsh Government and police.
“There has been a huge amount of controversy,” says Hillary. The Ukrainian refugees seem to be welcomed into the United Kingdom yet refugees from other parts of the world who are facing similar conflicts and wars face attempts to resist and divert their ability to enter the UK and seek sanctuary here.”
There could be several reasons for this, she adds, and racism at the highest level is clearly one of the motivators: “Some will say it’s for political purposes – for votes. Others say that its because of racism, people from European countries are described as having blonde hair and blue eyes and others seeking asylum in the United Kingdom are often black haired and black skinned or brown skinned.”
Raman’s treatment by the railway officials, according to Hillary, is serious a point of contention as she says they had no right to assess immigration documents. “Why would a guard ask to see immigration documents? Why would a guard think that he is legally qualified to interpret the rights and entitlements of those who have been granted refugee status?”
In any case, these issues are not up to be decided by Welsh railway officials, says Hillary: “There would be nothing from a Welsh document entitling any asylum seeker or a refugee to free travel, that is something that is not devolved to Wales.”
Train conductors, railway station guards and other railway staff asking for immigration documents may set a dangerous precedent for non-white residents in Wales, where individuals can make judgements on eligibility for a government scheme with no authority or warning.
Requesting immigration and asylum documents from refugees can cause not only personal humiliation for these individuals, but also allow ethnic biases to foster within transport organizations; reproducing results similar to racial profiling at airports – a common experience for many non-white British residents.
But this is a direct consequence of UK border policy, where the ongoing persecution of asylum seekers, including new plans to tag them like criminals, encourages people to police them or those they think are asylum seekers. It aims to create a border guard in every one of us, and this has also translated into judging who is and isn’t a legitimate refugee.
Nimisha Trivedi is a member of Stand Up to Racism Wales who has long campaigned against racist attacks on asylum seekers.
“People think that Ukraine is very close to Europe, and they need to be helped, which is absolutely right,” she says “…they should all be given the same courtesy.”
“But there seems to be more sympathy from people for those refugees as compared to someone like Raman, or for example those placed in the Penally camp – it was absolutely barbaric the way they are treated. There is definitely a divide in the way these people are treated,” says Nimisha.
She says that the issue of stems from the Home Office itself, which ultimately has the final say of who may enter Wales.
“A clear example of this is the Penally camp. The Welsh Government said that they weren’t aware of it, it was a Home Office decision. There wasn’t a consultation with the Welsh Government.”
As Nimisha explains, the racism Raman faced, doesn’t just come from nowhere, it is a direct result of UK government policy.
“Their project is making a hostile environment, and it continues against refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. We’ve got the Nationality and Borders Act and we’ve got the scheme that Priti Patel has introduced about deporting refugees to Rwanda… there is a perception that people coming from certain countries should not be welcome here… this hostile environment comes from the Tory government, from the top.” says Nimisha.
According to Adam Johannes, an anti-austerity activist with People’s Assembly Wales, racist border policy plays another role for those at the top as well.
“If you look at the history of modern immigration controls,” he explains, “when they were first introduced in the 20th century…against the Jews in Eastern Europe, calling them subversives and saying that they would take our wages… it was a way of deflecting anger from the people on top.”
The treatment of refugees in Wales, and the development of an ever increasing border, which follows asylum seekers into more and more areas of their life, is symptomatic of a racist immigration system. .
“We see the Nationality and Borders bill… seeing the government be given arbitrary powers to take away citizenship, they could even criminalize people rescuing migrants drowning in the English Channel or the Mediterranean. This dehumanisation is going to have a dark impact on British society and democracy.”
Adam says it is an issue that can and should be taken up in the struggle against the UK Government:
“The left wing of the independence movement should take up this issue, to say ‘should we leave the United Kingdom, the oldest imperialist and capitalist state in the world, to create the most progressive left-wing country in Europe? A country which will be a beacon for people struggling across Europe against austerity, against climate change, for an anti-racist humane society?’”
* A spokesperson for Transport for Wales told voice.wales, “We have briefed all TfW front-line staff on the terms and conditions,” but the clarification of these conditions has not been offered to the public at the time of writing this article; either by the organisation or the Welsh government.
The spokesperson also said that Transport for Wales is “carrying out a full investigation” into the incident but declined to provide the findings or progress of this investigation which has been on-going since at least May 25.
